feature phones

This fall will mark the 15th anniversary of the original INFOBAR feature phone in Japan, and telecoms corporation KDDI is releasing a new edition of the device to celebrate. The INFOBAR xv will be the third in this series, and it's by far the most striking of the bunch. And sure, it will run a very short list of Android apps, but let's be honest — this is more about indulging our eyes than anything else, because this feature phone is a stunner.

Mozilla ended development on its smartphone operating system, Firefox OS, at the beginning of 2017. But since it was open-source, other companies have used the code for new products. KaiOS is one fork of Firefox OS, and was first released in March of 2017. Google has already developed applications for KaiOS, but now it's investing $22 million into the company building it.

Happy New Year! It's that time again; with the new year comes our new annual prediction post. I tackled this last year, and rather than do a bunch of crazy, pulled-from-thin-air predictions, I ended up with a link-filled research-fest for the year. It worked out pretty well, so that's what's on the docket for today. First though, I'll take a look and see just how many of last year's predictions and rumors came true, and provide some updates for the more important topics.